Former bakery, Eglwysbach

Former bakery, Eglwysbach

The name of this house denotes one of its past uses. Hen Bopty means “Old Oven”, and here villagers used to buy bread. At that time the building was named Cumberland House. Previously it was a pub called the Swan Inn.

After the bakery closed, the shop was a grocer’s, selling tea and dry ingredients. Farmers would buy salt in bulk here – to salt a pig for sustenance over the winter. Also sold here were paraffin and cigarettes, and tobacco for chewing or for smoking in pipes.

In 1905, the London & North Western Railway sued John Williams, of Cumberland House, for £4 15s 8d – more than £500 in today’s money – in respect of a chest of tea which it alleged had been delivered to him after it arrived by train at Tal-y-Cafn station. His daughter had been running the shop for seven years. She told Llanrwst County Court that she had received a box of tea and a bag of sugar, as ordered, but not the chest of tea which had gone missing. The judge was satisfied that the box never arrived at the shop.